Hi, I recently upgraded to Maya 2011 and my workflow has been crippled because I can’t keep my hotkeys the way I want them. If I set the hotkeys in the editor and save them, they work fine during the current session. However, if I quit and relaunch Maya, the default hotkeys are added back on top of the ones I saved. This pretty much negates the purpose of setting hotkeys and it happens every time.

I’ve read in other forums of similar stories popping up here and there, but I’m hoping this will be noticed by Autodesk. If this isn’t the place to point out this bug, perhaps someone can tell me where to do so.

Thanks.

To submit bugs to Autodesk, In Maya, click on Help->Report a Problem…

I maintain an open Maya bug tracker at http://bugs.thnkr.com Your issue is http://bugs.thnkr.com/view.php?id=216

ok, it’s time for a workaround

try this:

The userHotkeys.mel file is missing the lines like:

and the file gets written over, so…

Create your Keys, saved your prefs, edit the file to add in the missing -releaseName lines, and save your new mel script in your local maya/scripts as

userHotkeys.mel

and probably want to put in a line in a

userSetup.mel

file in maya/scripts that says

or maybe even need a line like

I got stuck following you at step one. I want to just disable the hotbox (for now), without editing the installed files. I never use it and sometimes press space instead of the ALT key. I used the hotkey editor in preferences to remove the press and release codes for the hotbox, and clicked on save. That works for the immediate session, but there is no userHotKeys.mel file generated. Here is what the script editor said:

// Saving runtime commands to : C:/Users/WesHowe/Documents/maya/2011-x64/prefs/userRunTimeCommands.mel
// Saving named commands to : C:/Users/WesHowe/Documents/maya/2011-x64/prefs/userNamedCommands.mel
// Preferences saved. See Script Editor for details.

Neither of those two files has anything in them, however. Looking at the timestamps, none of the other files (userPrefs.mel, windowPrefs.mel, etc.) in the folder were changed.

oops, I was writing over a default hotkey with my own script.  Yes the bug is in the writing out of default hotkey removals.
So, if you don’t do anything but remove a default hotkey, nothing will get written out.

But, neverFear, you can just use the same language in any mel script, (you could put it in a script you named userHotkeys.mel in your prefs,(and maybe write protect it?) or you could put it directly into your userSetup.mel - or userSetup.py if you feel like putting it there.

Its the writing out that is messed up, not the reading.

What might that command be?

the keyShortcut flag value is the actual key - here its name - in quotes

the -name flag is the command that will happen when you press it.
the -releaseName flag is the command that will happen when you release it.

It’s the same hotkey command that sets the hotkey, only we are setting it to an empty string, thus nothing will be executed.

Also, possibly a good thing to remember, the error is only in writing out the removal of default hotkeys.
So, this bit is the bit you need to add to your scripts at the top, so you don’t go erasing the hotkeys you are trying to set, if you’re overwriting with your own.

Also, you possibly could copy over the 2010 userHotkeys.mel that works for you and write protect it…

Something else you might find useful
If you want the hotbox, but don’t want the pane-popping to occur, possibly because you keep hitting it by accident, you can execute the following command in mel

Warning: this will turn off your pane popping, you will need to restart to get it back again.

hotBox -noClickCommand "";